Longstanding Claims
Lawyers for women who blame their cancers on asbestos-tainted talc powder contend internal J&J documents indicated officials knew since the 1970s that powder mined in places such as Vermont and Italy contained trace amounts of asbestos, but failed to alert consumers or regulators. Asbestos is often found intertwined with talc.
”Had J&J acted responsibly and removed Johnson’s Baby Powder from the market in the 1970s, they would have saved the lives of thousands of women who have died needlessly of ovarian cancer,” Leigh O’Dell, an Alabama lawyer who is leading the plaintiffs’ cases that have been consolidated before a federal judge in New Jersey for pretrial information exchanges, said on Friday.
Mark Lanier, who persuaded a St. Louis jury last year to hit J&J with a $4.7 billion verdict on behalf of more than 20 women who said they developed ovarian cancer through long-term use of the company’s talc-based products, said he doesn’t expect this to be the last time that its talc will be found to contain asbestos.
“This confirms thousands of tests” over the years that have uncovered asbestos in J&J’s Baby Powder, he said.
Chris Placitella, a New Jersey lawyer who recently won a $37.2 million verdict in a talc case brought against J&J in its home city of New Brunswick, said the company’s own documents show they’ve known there was asbestos in its Baby Powder for at least four decades.
“This finding confirms exactly what multiple juries have found based upon internal testing done by Johnson & Johnson and what Johnson & Johnson has been denying for more than 40 years,” he said.
J&J said in February that it had received subpoenas and inquiries related to its iconic baby-powder products from the U.S. Justice Department, the SEC and the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Knewitz, the J&J spokesman, said at the time the company would cooperate with the inquiries.
Bloomberg News reported in July that the Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation into whether J&J lied to the public about the possible cancer risks of its talc powder.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.